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therealdb

Well, taking a backup inside ZWaveJS is a breeze - and yes, it's very easy to backup (or restore) the NVM on the ZWA-2. In fact, I just restored a backup from UZB to ZWA-2 and I was good to go.

I think you'll never need to move it around the house, because the antenna is huge. No problems in pairing devices either, but that was the case with UZB before and I think it's a ZWave JS prerogative in general. It was just plug&play for me, but I understand that if you have to change your logic to match new device IDs it may make sense to start from scratch - time permitting.

toggledbits

@therealdb said in Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 & ZBT-2:

are external Zwave controllers supported via USB?

Not an expert here, since I've never really embraced my C7 as a core of my home, but based on a little digging apparently not. The predecessor SmartThings hubs did, but as of the C7, the hub lacks the drivers to support an external Z-Wave stick, only its own internal chip. I'm sure C8 is even more entrenched.

Like many of us, I have a hundred+ Z-Wave devices in my home. If there's an upside to a piecewise migration, it's that it isn't Vera. Pairing was always a slow, anxiety-inducing activity on Vera... one device... maybe pairs... Luup restart (90 seconds or more before system is stable enough to proceed)... maybe bricks the Vera... if not, two identical devices end up with different configuration/capability... horrible. When I moved one level of my house to a USB stick last year, I could almost pair devices as quickly as I could walk up to them. You can tell me if the ZWA-2 experience is similar (can you walk it around self-powered or with a USB battery pack and pair devices?). It's not as easy as a migration, but there's always something to be said for starting with a clean slate, and as long as the process is smooth and I get to keep my hair and sanity by the end of it, I'll put up with the time it takes to get there.

Going forward, thinking to what may follow, I assume that you can back up the NVM on the ZWA-2?

therealdb

@toggledbits are external Zwave controllers supported via USB? that could be another route, as in the old Vera days.

toggledbits

Just on a lark, I took a little distraction trip on the Elevation downloadable (local/manual) backup files. It turns out, the backup files are compressed and encrypted, and I found all the resources for undoing all of that, but it's not productive to do it because the files don't have a copy of the NVM data on them, which is a bummer. The C7 to C8 upgrade process apparently worked because it used cloud-based backup and offered additional "Migrate radio" options for Z-Wave and ZigBee, which presumably pushed the additional radio data up to the cloud specifically for that process; no local option. So no win to be had from the backup files, it appears.

therealdb

@tunnus I see there's a beta for C8. The point is to just take a NVM backup in the format supported by ZwaveJS. after that, it's a breeze to restore it on a new controller, if you have a minimum SDK/fw version, as mentioned in the ZWA release notes.
It's wort a try, if you have lots of Zwave devices and unpair/repair them is out of question for you.
I'm still on my original ZWave network I built in a previous house 10+ years ago - and that's a testament to the enormous flexibility that Zwave offered me in the last decade.

therealdb

@tunnus if you could install ZwaveJS on your c8, just backup the nvm, take the file and restore it on your final controller. Easier than you’d think. Secondary controllers promoted to primary are always a mess in my experience.

therealdb

After all these years, no NAK/CAN is a joy to see

therealdb

yep, parameters for reactions will definitely improve my job here, specially when speaking of thermostats/HVAC in general. Thanks as always for your support, Patrick!

toggledbits

@therealdb said in [MSR] Feature request: For Each action on arrays/groups:

There's no way to filter the group devices.

This is a comment I'm curious about, because there actually is a way to filter a group. But that may not be much help on its own without a couple of additional changes. I am working on parameters for reactions. I think that will address the need for different scripts. Delays in scripts also came to mind when I did the alarm() function, so that's a distinct possibility in the near future. I'm bookmarking this thread so that the work I'm doing on reactions trends toward making this easier. Thanks for the detail!

therealdb

That's one case:

I want to send the ON/OFF command again, until every device in the group is ON/OFF. I have a count just to avoid an infinite loop.

It works, but it's not ideal to send a command to a device already on (or off) - because I want to avoid unnecessary traffic. There's no way to filter the group devices. I know I could write a script and do it, but the point here is to avoid a script if possible.

devices_status = false,
counter = counter + 1,
finalStatus = true,

each id in getEntity('groups>ac_casa1').attributes.sys_group.members: do
  v = bool(getEntity( id )?.attributes?.power_switch?.state),
  #print("!!!!!!DEBUG" + getEntity( id ).name + " - " + v + " - " + devices_status + " - " + finalStatus),
  devices_status = (v == finalStatus) && devices_status
done

EDIT: also, there's no way to delay in code, so I need 2 scripts anyway, to send on/off and then set the mode. Thanks.

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